Keeping Young
by Redderhead
Summary: Johnlock; John initiates a game of Hide and Seek and unknowingly a first kiss. Fluffy oneshot.


_Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments regarding my previous story; The Baker Street Wedding – I am currently working on a sequel due to many requests!_

_In the mean time; a wee one to keep you happy._

_As per usual my gentle readers; I own nothing and no one; Viva la Johnlock!_

Keeping Young

John paused as he looked the tall man up and down. He was such a fascinating character, so alien in his body with full use of his mind.

His body is lean, thin but deceptively strong. He only eats once a week when on cases and only because John force feeds him.

The consulting detective always smells freshly showered; regardless of the countless days he doesn't seem to change clothes whilst on a lead.

John feels a pang of jealousy. He would love to see the world the way Sherlock Holmes does. He was trying to learn; be a student to the master, but it was difficult. How could Sherlock know what type of pet someone had by a single white strand of fur?

"Looking at me will not help you identify that strand, John" Sherlock mused as he peered unblinkingly through the microscope. How did he do that?

John coughed awkwardly from his spot across the table before looking down at the item once more.

"Well," John began. "It's white." Sherlock sighed heavily.

"What else?" he said.

"It's possibly; 2 inches long?" John asked, sitting forward in his seat at the kitchen table, his hands clasped between his knees as he looked hopefully up at his best friend.

Sherlock lifted his eyes for the first time in hours and fixed John with a stare.

"That should tell you all you need to know." He said blandly.

"How, Sherlock? It's a bloody strand of hair!" John burst in frustration.

"Good, John. Good" Sherlock said, his eyebrows lifting as he smiled lightly at his shorter friend across the table.

"Wait, what?" John asked, confused.

"It's a strand of _hair, _not fur." Sherlock said, switching his slide under the microscope.

John looked down at the hair again in awe. "What else can _you_ see then?" John asked huffily.

Sherlock pushed the microscope aside abruptly and picked up the hair.

"As a medical man, John, I'm astounded by your lack of insight; there is a follicle at one end; from a scalp, obviously human. The strand is thick, unbreakable with hands alone. Therefore the owner must have a good diet – high in calcium, a female then, probably pregnant. The hair is not _white _it is blonde." Sherlock paused for his eyes to flick to John's. "And it is 1 inch and three quarters long" He said sharply, placing the hair back down on the table's surface in front of John.

"Were you born like this?" John asked wearily.

Sherlock looked up at John questioningly. "Like what?" he asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Could you tell what coffee someone liked by looking at their eyebrows when you were a toddler?" John asked with an amused smile, his elbow coming to rest on the table for his hand to accommodate the weight of his head.

"John, that is impossible" Sherlock scoffed, pulling his microscope back to his eyes.

After a moment of silence, John had resolved he was not to get an answer as he made for the kettle.

"I have always trusted my eyes." Sherlock said quietly, making John turn to look at him. "I learned from my father. He studied the science of deduction. I merely experimented further when he died. Mycroft is lazy, he could be so much better at it. I studied hard. Meticulously experimented; collecting hairs from every breed of dog, cat and human available to me. I made notes, studied them every day. It took me a year to catalogue every pet and human hair possible." Sherlock finished, not breaking his eyes away from the eyepieces in front of him.

John sat down once more.

"You didn't have much of a child hood did you?" John asked gently.

Sherlock scoffed. "Childhood, boring" he said, changing the slide under the microscope once more.

John sat back in his chair, licking his lip in thought.

"Have you ever played hide and seek?" John asked.

Sherlock's hand stopped mid air as he turned his head slowly to see John. "No" he said sharply.

"Come on, it'll be fun. You need to relax up a bit, we don't have a case at the minute, and I'm sick of looking at hair." John said, once more leaning forward to look up at Sherlock's avoiding eyes.

Eventually, after much coaxing, John had managed to get Sherlock to play.  
"Ok, you go and hide somewhere in the flat, I will count to 100 with my eyes covered and then I'll come find you." John explained with a smile.

Sherlock shrugged and looked to the floor for a minute before smiling up at John.

"Go on then, go and hide" John said with a laugh, lowering his head to the table's surface on top of his arms, he started counting aloud.

Sherlock made a mad dash for the door; John could hear that much, from then it was quiet. He must be in the hallway then John surmised. He smiled.

Once John had reached 100, he felt like a schoolboy again as he shouted out;

"I'm coming to get you, ready or not!" he couldn't believe he was playing hide and seek with the Metropolitan police's Consulting Detective.

As John entered the hallway, he was surprised at the lack of Holmes. Going into the bathroom, John found no one; he entered Sherlock's room to find it dark and empty. John pondered for a moment with furrowed brow before he headed up the staircase to his own room. Upon no sighting of his friend, John returned to the living room to see Sherlock once more at his microscope.

"Sherlock, you're supposed to _hide_" John said with a heavy sigh as he sat down at the table.

"As ever John you see but do not observe; I ran to the door and tip-toed back here, sat down and didn't move. The key to hiding is to be within plain sight". Sherlock mused, a smile evident in his voice.

John huffed as he flopped down in the wooden chair once more. Sherlock became aware of his friend's disappointment;

"You hide" Sherlock said in his deep monotone, looking through the microscope.

"What?" John asked sharply.

"You hide, I will come and find you, that is how the game is played is it not?" Sherlock said, fixing the doctor with a knowing look.

John looked dubious as he watched Sherlock lay his head on the table and start counting aloud before he ran as quietly as he could up the stairs to his bedroom, he promptly pulled the cable for the loft above his bed and climbed up the small ladder to hide in the attic.

John waited patiently, catching his breath and feeling slightly scared as he knew Sherlock would find him and that he would jump when he did.

The attic was so stuffy that John had to control his breathing to stop from sneezing. He eventually heard the shout of Sherlock as he began his hunt for him.

John chewed his thumbnail in anticipation as he crouched next to the attic entrance.

He heard the floorboard under the threshold of his own room; Sherlock had known that much, he then heard Sherlock opening and closing his closet, landing sharply on the floor to look under the bed and then open the window to see if John was on the roof.

Before John could calculate a further hiding place the door to the loft opened and Sherlock's head appeared beside his foot; as expected, John jumped with an undignified squeal as he flustered around. Sherlock smiled.

"Found you" he said as he continued to climb into the loft beside John. "Good place, John, I hadn't known we had a loft." John started giggling as he watched Sherlock shift around on hands and knees in the small space; his suit turning white with collected cobwebs.

"Fancy a cuppa?" John asked, slightly breathless from laughing.

"Why not" Sherlock said as he flopped unceremoniously to sit crouched in the smallest part of the house.

John crawled his way to the door in the floor and pushed down the rickety ladder. As he clambered down it, Sherlock followed closely, only a rung between them. Suddenly, the wooden ladder gave out, three rung's snapping at once under the weight, John landed first with his back upon the bed, his head narrowly missing the bedpost, Sherlock landed indelicately on top of his flatmate, chest to chest with John.

The pair of them were slightly winded for a few minutes before they began to laugh. Sherlock looked shocked at the bark of laughter that escaped his friend and more so that he could feel it reverberate against his chest but he joined in regardless.

After a few more minutes, the pair calmed down, neither making a move to separate or get up.

Much to John's surprise, Sherlock let his head rest on the doctor's chest; John smiled slightly and wrapped an arm around his friend in a platonic hug.

"See? Playing is fun" John said lightly; "keeps us young".

Sherlock smiled, it was typical of John to do this, to distract him so much from his work, from his experiments, all in the name of _keeping young._

Sherlock was unprepared for the sudden shift he felt as he lifted his head to look down at his flatmate. His eagle sharp eyes had already catalogued John's face and honest warm eyes, but they had only ever observed and not _seen_.

Sherlock was caught off guard by the warm smile he was receiving; the usually dark eyes were a cobalt blue with flecks of dark brown and hazel. Sherlock found himself staring as John licked his lips; he tended to do so under pressure.

Without so much as a thought Sherlock bumped his lips against John's unceremoniously.

There was no fanfare, no fireworks and no electric-like shock through his body; there was only John.

John had surprisingly taken this in his stride, a short kiss from his flatmate upon his own bed, and he hadn't had any outbursts of anger or upset, he just, kissed back.


End file.
